Walking along the street today, I sense (more than actually see) these pieces of something dropping from a tree. They’re not leaves; not floating. More like discards of some sort. I look up, look around, and my eyes come to rest on a squirrel sitting there, maybe two feet above me – reachable by extending my arm if I wanted. I stand there, watching him as he takes a shelled nut that someone has clearly left out for him, and peels away at the shell with her teeth. It’s an industrious and persistent activity on his part. Part head-bob, part gnaw, part genteel-peel; like if she were a human, she’d be a card dealer expertly whisking cards across the table to all the players. I stand there, oddly transfixed at the expert simplicity of his task. And wondering how he made his way up that tree with this large nut in his mouth without getting distracted, losing his grip, falling to predators below…etc.
As I walk away thinking I have not really spent any time watching this very thing before in my life – and, frankly, that my ‘noticing’ has been of a very poor quality for much of what goes on in my life in the last number of years – I notice a cat sitting in a window to my right. That cat is staring, intently, head cocked to the right. I follow her line of vision back the way I came and she is staring very intently at the same thing I just was.
But for an entirely different reason.
Torr.Road 